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Starmatic Review

Cooler than Instagram? It might just be possible

It’s difficult to believe that an app could come along that might actually beat Instagram at its own game, but after a few minutes of fiddling with Starmatic, you may start to think it’s true. This social snapper with all the filters you’ve come to expect is incredibly similar to the Facebook owned-photo app, but this one has a much cleaner, crisper interface.

It’s actually an interesting mix of Instagram, Hipstamatic and Pinterest when you take each of its key elements in turn. The filters, tilt-shift and lighting effects for instance are straight out of the Instagram playbook. The photo-taking screen, retro-style interface and film animations as you select filters feels very much like Hipstamatic and other retro-themed apps, and finally the trending and featured image feeds are stacked a lot like Pinterest.

Thankfully this mix of styles, while familiar, never feels derivative. It just feels more focused and intuitive having taken the best of the competition and built from there. The end result is a very intuitive set of menus, an easy filtering system for finding great new images, and a fine photo taker for you to play with.

All it lacks right now is a community as broad as Instagram’s. Having said that, the few members there are seems to be largely quite talented photographers tempted by the filter set of this cool app, and as such there are far fewer mirror and self-snaps and far more eye-catching images to enjoy.

Specification-wise, it’s on a par with Instagram, but Starmatic is still building its community.